*** ALFONSO MATTERA: Notre européanité. Une Histoire millénaire, de l'épopée de Marathon à la réunification des peoples de l'Ancien Continent. LGDJ (Lextenso Éditions, 70 rue du Gouverneur Général Eboué, F-92131 Issy-les-Moulineaux. Tel: (33-1) 40934000 - Fax: 40518185 - Internet: http://www.lextenso-editions.fr ). 2014, 517 pp, €54. ISBN 978-2-275-04408-8.
Some people are decidedly multi-talented and Alfonso Mattera is one of them. He was known by some as a high-ranking official at the European Commission, as an indefatigable and meticulous artisan of the European Single Market. Others discovered him through the courses he has been giving for many years at the European College in Parma, the European College in Bruges and a number of universities in Europe. And then there are others who know him from the Revue du Marché Unique Européen that he set up in 1991 and which he continues to run, along with other former European officials, under the name Revue du Droit de l'Union Européenne. And then, finally, there are those who have gained a deeper understanding of the ongoing European project through the many books that this Italian lawyer and philologist has written. This particular book shows that this man of letters combines technical prowess and erudition, making him an author who is as elegant as he is convincing in this remarkable defence of a Europeanism that goes back thousands of years and crystallised at the end of nationalist tragedies and the infamous Shoah into “one of the most extraordinary ventures that humanity has ever undertaken,” namely the revolution which, since the “famous Monnet-Schuman Declaration,” is the European construction that is inventing “a new model of humanist civilisation.”
In order to define this dream of Europe, Alfonso Mattera starts by covering “twenty-five centuries of History, from Socrates to Jean Monnet,” taking pleasure in “considering that the Sicilian abode of Zeus in Europe was Taormina - one of the first homes of Greater Greece - whose name” is derived from 'taurus-moenia (bull in the fortress).” This town in Sicily was the birthplace of the European Economic Community on 2 and 3 June 1955 after the first … “European night marathon.” He sees Philippides, the soldier who ran to his death to announce the victory of the Greeks over the Persians (and whose sculpture is on the cover of this book, which is a great success in terms of graphics), as the man to whom we owe it that “since that day, the indestructible value of liberty has been part of the European spiritual heritage.” He explains that this is not the Old Continent, “a slightly scornful name forged in the seventeenth century by the inhabitants of the New Continent,” but an “Ancient Europe, just like its history, its civilisation, the values it has handed down to us and that have shaped our Europeanism.” After reviewing the main stages in the history of the continent (Alexander the Great, the “first messenger of European values in the world,” the Europe of Ancient Rome and then the Eastern Roman Empire, Europe under Charlemagne, Europe of the Middle Ages, the Europe of Humanism and the Renaissance, the first European unification projects, Europe of the Enlightenment preceding Napoleon's Europe and Romanticism that saw the beginning of the “potential conflict between the idea of nation and the idea of Europeanism,” all of which was followed by the “crisis of European identity values” that fed into imperialism, nationalism and totalitarianism), we reach 9 May 1950, that “date that saw the re-writing of the History of the Ancient Continent” after the “Second World War” - and there is no proof that there will not be a third… - which was nothing but an “act of barbarism against humanity.” He is then a witness of the various phases of the European construction, quizzing “living historical memory in order to discern, though a faithful description of the facts, the hidden humanity, spontaneity and deep feeling of the protagonists.” Thus unfolds the relation of a majestic venture which has always grown stronger from the crises that grew within it.
Will the same apply in the future? Europe's responsibility in the third millennium, following the Nobel Prize that it was rightly awarded, is to turn itself into a “humanist civilisation, the artisan of a better world,” states Alfonso Mattera in the tenth and final chapter, in which the witness becomes a prophet and above all, a prosecutor. He exclaims that it is time to put an end to Eurosceptic pollution and the even worse Europhobic contamination that is proliferating like rising damp “particularly in the United Kingdom” where (more than elsewhere, but not only there…) there is a mushrooming of figures who “are still linked to the vestiges of an imperialist past and therefore deaf to the call of History and incapable of understanding historical changes.” In the people who “reject,” “vilify” and “desecrate Europe that is today a model of humanist civilisation that inspires a huge number of countries around the world,” he discerns the people of Plato's cave, who use “flickering shadows” to perceive and gauge the world, shadows that betray reality. He provides further arguments to explain that no, the European Union is not and will not be a “bureaucratic and centralising Super-State aiming to homogenise national identities,” nor a fully political body where “ a political and democratic deficit” triumph. Is it deceitful to claim this as the reality of Europe? Of course. However, surely it is going too far to dream that expressing the hope that some “politicians and chroniclers” of our time might try to “shake off the chains of ignorance and leave their cave to observe the reality of the world surrounding them”? This superb book, both in terms of content and in terms of form, is not for them, but rather for everyone else, the far bigger number. Especially for young people, who are called upon to continue this greatest of revolutions! And for whom it would make an ideal Christmas present…
Michel Theys
*** ERIC VAN DEN ABEELE: La réglementation “intelligente, affutée et performante” de l'UE: une nouvelle bureaucratie au service de la compétitivité? Institut Syndical Européen (5 bld. du roi Albert II, B-1210 Brussels. Tel: (32-2) 2240470 - Fax: 2240502 - Email: etui@etui.org - Internet: http://www.etui.org ). "Working Paper", No. 2014.05. 2014, 31 pp.
A debate is raging between those at European level who want to deregulate, those who want to adapt regulations in line with company competitiveness, and those who feel in the face of everything that regulation is an element of legal security and protection of the general interest in the wider sense. In this brief study, a Belgian researcher invited to the European Social Observatory, who also lectures at Mons-Hainaut University, verifies what exactly is going on. He starts by reviewing the practices of players using the measuring system of impact assessments and the desire to reduce red tape. In the second section, he analyses the new Refit programme (Regulatory Fitness and Performance Programme) whose acronym is highly revealing of the desire by some to slim down regulation rather than improve performance… - and looks at how this new tool follows on from or marks a break with the previous agendas. He makes an implacable diagnosis. Not only has the initial objective of simplifying and improving quality been dropped to the benefit of boosting competitiveness and the fight against bureaucracy, but the Commission has ended up tying its own hands behind its back and therefore giving up on its “role as a driving force” by allowing itself to be bypassed. “The danger is that political decisions will gradually be de-legitimised to the benefit of the expert, (…) who is supposed to understand everything and be able to assess everything, at a lower cost,” explains the author with concern, seeing this drifting off course as a threat to “the project of a federal Europe.”
(MT)
*** BRENT F. NELSEN, ALEXANDER STUBB (Eds.): The European Union. Readings on the theory and practice of European integration. Lynne Rienner (1800 30th Street, Suite 314, Boulder, CO 80301, USA. Tel: (1-303) 444-6684 - Fax: 444-0824 - Email: questions@rienner.com - Internet: http://www.rienner.com ). 2014, 403 pp, $27-50. ISBN 978-1-62637-033-3.
Dreamt up by a politics professor who is now the Finnish prime minister as an introduction to a study of the concepts of united Europe and integration, this book brings together what are seen as the most significant studies on the development of theories in this domain. In this fourth revised and expanded edition, the authors start by presenting the visions of the first designers of the European Union, along with outstanding documents by Altiero Spinelli, Jean Monnet, Robert Schuman or Stanley Hoffman, for example. The third and fourth parts of the book are devoted to more recent political development, considered from the theoretical and practical viewpoints, be they the means used to tackle the crisis, stem political malaise and manage cultural conflicts or international competition.
(CDe)
*** ERRATUM. The correct email address of Éditions La nuée Bleue (see the start of European Library No. 11198/1070 of 18 November 2014) is lanueebleue@editions-quotidien.fr.
*** JEAN-MARC FAVRET: L'essentiel de l'Union européenne. Ses institutions et son droit. Gualino éditeur (Lextenso éditions, 70 rue du Gouverneur Général Félix Eboué, F-92131 Issy-les-Moulineaux Cedex 02. Tel: (33-1) 40934000 - Fax: 40518185 - Internet: http://www.lextenso-editions.fr ). "Les Carrés Droit/Science politique" series. 2014, 102 pp, €11-50. ISBN 978-2-297-040012-9.
This is the fortieth (yes, that's right, the fortieth) edition. In it, a doctor of law who is public rapporteur at the Administrative Court of Appeal in Nancy, France, presents the European Union and the law that governs it in a very educational manner in twenty very clear and didactical factsheets. It initiates the reader - who is most likely a student, but could also be the man in the street who wishes to better understand and gain an overview of the ins and outs of the European Union - into the main stages of the European Union, enlargement, the institutions' headquarters, the decision-making process, the hierarchy of rules, appeals under European law and the relationship between European law and the law of the European Convention of Human Rights. The book has been updated to the European elections of May 2014.
(PBo)
*** Il Federalista. Rivista di politica. Edif (8 Villa Glori, I-27100 Pavia. Internet: http://www.ilfederalista.eu ). 2014, No. 1-2, 207 pp. Annual subscription: €25 (Europe), €30 (elsewhere).
Published before the last European elections (May 2014), this issue of a publication close to the Movimento Federalista Europeo called for new legislative body to be constituant, because as the editorialist explains, if the “process of transforming monetary union into a genuine political union” is not achieved over the next five years, then we risk having to witness the death of the European project. In the same spirit, many other contributions look back at the thirty years of the Spinelli project that led to the European Parliament calling for a federal constitution. Pier Virgilio Dastoli, who formerly worked very closely with the man of Ventotene, points out the up-to-date nature of this project, and Prof. Mehemet Cevat Yildirim notes the opportunities that were missed because it hadntt been adopted. Other contributions look at subjects such as the crisis in Ukraine and the role of the State in today's globalised economy.
(MT)
*** Fedechoses… pour le fédéralisme. Presse fédéraliste (Maison de l'Europe et des Européens, 242 rue Duguesclin, F-69003 Lyon. Internet: http://www.pressefederaliste.eu ). September 2014, No. 165, 40 pp. Annual subscription: €30.
In this issue of an ever combative French federalist review, Lucio Levi, president of Movimento Federalista Europeo, sees the choice of Jean-Claude Juncker as the president of the European Commission an “initial victory for the European Parliament against the European Council's absolutism.” Another theme in this issue, alongside the hundredth anniversary of the death of Jaurès, is the regions of Europe that are demanding independence. In this connection, the editorialist points out, taking the example of the canton of Jura, that self-government aspirations do not necessarily have to mean independence.
(PBo)
*** PETER CSERNE, MIKLÓS KÖNCZÖL, MARTA SONIEWICKA (Eds.): The Rule of Law and the Challenges to Jurisprudence. Central and Eastern European Forum for Legal, Political, and Social theory Yearbook. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, Postfach 350, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761717 - Fax: 3761727 - Fax: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.com ). 2014, 148 pp, €39-95. ISBN 976-3-631-64381-5.
The ten essays in this book have been selected from presentations at the fourth Forum of Central and Eastern Europe for Legal, Political and Social Theory that took place in Celje, Slovenia, in March 2012. The authors are all young researchers from Central and Eastern Europe active in the legal, political and social domains. The presented texts reflect their concerns about what the rule of law is in reality and what it should be, with the authors re-considering democracy in the light of recent controversies surrounding it. The book is divided into five sections: 'A new look at the classics,' 'Methodology and jurisprudence,' 'Legal reasoning and objectivity,' 'Judiciary, legitimacy, democracy' and 'The frontiers of criminal justice.' The forum is intended among other things as a response from the young generation of researchers in this region to the dominance of US and Western research in this field. It is not so much an expression of an intention to build a challenge to established authority as a desire to look at problems encountered in the region in order to articulate a different path while taking account of the fact that in the past two decades, researchers and citizens of Central and Eastern Europe have had many opportunities to realise that neither democracy nor the rule of law can ever be immune from attack.
(CDe)